But answer me logically and reasonably, what is the harm?
The harm in it, is that it creates a potential for abuse or misuse of this information by
anyone, anywhere, at any later time.
If I'm playing on a server, I don't generally care if the server operator sees the chats. I don't care that spectators can see it. I don't care that they can post the condump or extract the text from a demo. That would be on their conscious if they post anything that can be harmful to others later.
I have no problem with the logging of game activities and the chats themselves, it's the automatic reposting of said logs, and the fact that people aren't aware that it's happening that's the issue.
One
possible example of how this could be bad:
Let's say you're playing on a server, and a friend of yours asks for your email address. You look at the player list (and let's just assume that you know and trust everyone there) so you go ahead and tell them. So, no harm done. Right? Wrong. Now your email address is known publicly and accessible to anyone on the Internet. Now you can expect spam in your inbox, once the address is found by spammers.
What if it wasn't your email address that you typed in, but your home phone number? What if it was your mumble server's password? The list could go on and on...
Does this still seem like a minor thing to you? Well, what if you ARE a minor?
Most of the people on these forums don't have kids, so try to imagine this from a parent's perspective: Your kid thought they were just telling their friends something, but in reality they just gave their personal info away to the entire world.
So again, my point is: The players aren't aware of the fact that anything that they say, can and will be posted for
everyone to see. And that's wrong, in my opinion.
This might not seem like a big deal to you guys, and the results of the poll certainly show that that's the general attitude, but as someone who's just trying to look out for my own privacy, and possibly protect the privacy of others, I'll continue to make an issue of this until I'm satisfied that people are being thoroughly informed of the implications and warned of the possible consequences of sharing any info in Tremulous games.
Murphy's law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."